Augustine’s conversion, went on the Pope, was not "sudden or fully accomplished from the start", but was "a veritable journey, which remains a model for all of us". A journey that, explained Benedict XVI, "certainly had its peak in his conversion and then in his baptism, but which did not end in that Easter vigil of the year 387, when in Milan the brilliant African rhetorician was baptised by bishop Ambrogio". Three are the stages of the "only great conversion of Augustine", who "passionately searched for the truth all his life". The first stage, according to the Pope ("first conversion"), consists "in his gradual approach to Christianity", which in fact he "drank" with the milk of Monica, his mother, and which made his Christian breeding and "a deep attraction for Christ" remain in him, despite the "profligate life" of his youth. However, Augustine’s first conversion was also boosted by philosophy, "especially Platonic philosophy", which "had helped bring him even closer to Christ by showing him the existence of the Logos, the making reason". But only the reading of Saint Paul’s letters, recalled the Pope, "did fully reveal the truth to him", as he writes himself in one of the most famous pages of his "Confessiones". (continued)
